No film franchise has ever had a good fifth instalment.
In fact, Chapter 5 is usually a series death knell.
Consider the evidence, which does not include reboots or prequels: Dirty Harry took his undignified final bow with The Dead Pool; Die Hard ended with the dire A Good Day To Die Hard; Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire was a franchise low point (and hopefully a swansong); the Pirates of the Caribbean series careened downwards since the first instalment and crashed with Dead Men Tell No Tales; Harrrison Ford deserved a better send-off than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny; and whoever thought Jason Bourne’s perfect trilogy needed two follow-ups, concluding with the rickety Jason Bourne, needs to stay in movie jail.
Talking of perfect trilogies, Pixar achieved just that in 2010 with Toy Story 3, which was the pitch-perfect conclusion to their flagship series which launched the animation studio’s film division in 1995. It was thrilling, nuanced, gave audiences the greatest on-screen villain since Hannibal Lecter - Sunnyside’s charismatic, tormented and genocidal Lots-O'-Huggin’ Bear – and had a finale so emotionally resonant that any dry-eyed viewer could legitimately be carted into a dimly-lit room to fail the Voight-Kampff test.
